As we concerned about protecting the NHS I thought this would be interesting - number of covid patients in hospital in the UK

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...9263f6b17a.png

Also last figure is from 16 December of 7,611 - the figure has moved between 7179 and 7697 this month so far. Interestingly this is lower than most of November and the second half of October.

Another thank you for continuing to supply this information. What is particularly useful is that you always present the same statistics, whereas the Beeb and the other media chop and change to suit their storybook.

What I find quite interesting is that we were told that Omicron would be doubling every 2-3 days, but cases are in fact up 52% in a week which is terrible but not nearly as bad as 400%+ in a week.

Very similar trend to the same period last year. And we all know what happened after that when the Government ignored the forecasts.

Hopefully we won’t see anywhere near what we saw in Jan-Mar 2021, but as I’ve said many times before, just relying on what has happened is a very poor way to prepare for the future.

hardly anyone was vaccinated this time last year. vaccines do provide significant protection for hospitalisations with omicron. omicron is significantly milder that the predominant variants last year.

Scottish numbers are very high today so I would expect 100k to be breached today in the UK...

PANORAMIC study - University of Oxford - UK 4 nations residents only (no need to be a UK citizen though).

Just pushing this out so that as many people know about this, which is the easiest way to get access to Molnupiravir, the anti viral treatment. It is randomised so some people going into this study won't get the antivirals.

The key bit is that for the anti virals to work they need to be taken ASAP after a positive PCR. The pills need to be posted/sent by courier to you so it's important that people know about this and can rapidly pass the information to their friends and families when they hear of a PCR

You are eligible for this trial if you get a positive PCR, regardless of vaccine status, have symptoms, feeling unwell and are either
- over 50
OR
- between 18 and 49 and with a vulnerability to COVID - long list of examples, but the website lists them all - but includes COPD, diabetes I and II, immuno-compromised, mental health issues, and a broader vulnerabilities category.

https://www.panoramictrial.org/participant-information

Yes, 28 days for adults. That's from the PCR date, no COVID vaccine of any sort allowed, and wouldn't be a good use of the vaccine frankly.
12 weeks for those under 18.

Daily data:

Cases 91,743 (54,661 last Monday)
Deaths 44 (38)
Patients admitted 919 (926 on the 7th)
Patients in hospital 7,482 (7,386 on the 10th)
Patients in ventilation beds 879 (901 on the 10th)
People vaccinated up to and including 19 December 2021:
First dose: 51,498,034
Second dose: 47,051,876
Booster: 28,978,244

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 60.8% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is down 5.4%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 112.3 today. 846,466 boosters yesterday which must be a record for a Sunday by quite a large margin I think.

I will complement your statistics [MENTION=611234]DaveS[/MENTION] with the details of the hospital admissions per region of England. The relative plateau is an effect of a decrease in East and Midlands compensated by a strong increase in London.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FHDjG-hW...ng&name=medium

Sounds like you came close to a Step 2 lockdown, but averted for now....

Edit: beaten to the same basic point by fransknorge . It is worth playing with the Government's data dashboard though, because it does let you visualise these data quite nicely.

The implication in your post that hospitals are fine because nationwide data to 16th Dec is not showing an increase is misleading for two reasons.

Firstly, hospitalisations are a lagging indicator (deaths even more so) - I am sure someone who is more familiar with current data will be able to provide the average days between infection and until hospitalisation but from memory it is a week or a bit more. 8 days ago on 12th November, overall infections were ~50,000 - this was not too dissimilar to earlier in November, i.e. before Omicron came along. So if we cut off the data at that point, particularly at a national level (see below), you wouldn't expect to see hospitalisations increasing yet.

Secondly, nationwide data conceals considerable variation: we know that Omicron took off in a big way in London first - cases went from a 7-day average of 6,997 on 1st December to 16,306 on 12th December (the last date a 7-day average is available). So London is the place we would expect to see indicators of increased hospitalisation first, and indeed we do. Admissions went from a 7-day-average of 108 on 1st December, to 192.7 on 15th December.

This is quite different from other regions, as you can see if you select these on the drop-down and zoom in on the recent month. For example, East Midlands, Yorks & the Humber, West Midlands and North West have only really seen a noticeable uptick in cases (as opposed to longer term trend) since ~12th-13th December which is barely a week ago. Thus far, outside London this sharper uptick hasn't yet translated into hospitalisations, which again is what you would expect due to the aforementioned lag. I suspect that the next week or 10 days will show an increase in hospitalisations all regions. I hope I am wrong.

While I agree with your first sentence and I hope this will provide the most vulnerable in the UK with a lot of protection, I am afraid I take issue with the second sentence - again, for two reasons. First, the jury is still out - there are some good indicators (Danish data in particular), but I don't think there is anything conclusive on this (yet - I'm sure it will come, probably quite soon if cases continue to go up, but the Government is making decisions based on imperfect data).

And second, if the Omicron wave is big enough and intense enough, there will still be healthcare problems. We're back to the "small percentage of a very large number is still a very large number" problem.

indeed. Likely a reflection of the low jab rates in the capital. I expect any increases in hospitalisation rates in other areas of the country with much better jab rates will be much less.

The NHS website says (my bolding):I rebooked my booster at 27 days after the positive PCR test but more than 28 days after symptoms (or sympton in my case) started. This is about a week before I am due to leave the country (assuming not still positive with a PCR). So I would still have time to find a walk-in booster clinic over Christmas if they went by the PCR date but would prefer the booked slot if possible.

Whilst I hope you’re correct, I think this may be an inference too far without seeing detailed data on what proportion of recent hospitalisations are Delta/Omicron, and within those, subgroup analysis of what proportion are totally unvaccinated, single-jabbed, double-jabbed and boosted.

In the last few days, I’ve had several good friends test positive, and some are feeling very rough indeed. All were double-vaccinated and in their 20s-40s; some were also boosted (at least 1 week ago).

There is very clear evidence already that vaccines reduce the likelihood of hospitalisations from omicron, and that applies for 2 jabs.

I don’t think I am therefore sticking my neck out far in saying if you are unvaccinated you are much more likely to need hospitalisation (albeit within the lower overall rates for omicron).

Therefore it won’t be surprising if areas with lower vaccination rates see more hospitalisations.

in terms of your friends I assume (and hope) no hospitalisations? If that’s the case then the jab has done it’s job.